Real-world Statistical Regularity Impacts Inattentional Blindness.

Does the likelihood of us experiencing inattentional blindness depend on whether the scenes are statistically regular (e.g., probable) or not? Previous studies have shown that observers find it harder to perceive real-world statistical irregularities, such as improbable (statistically irregular) scenes (e.

The Brain's Sensitivity to Real-world Statistical Regularity Does Not Require Full Attention.

Predictive coding accounts of perception state that the brain generates perceptual predictions in the service of processing incoming sensory data. These predictions are hypothesized to be afforded by the brain's ability to internalize useful patterns, that is, statistical regularities, from the environment. We have previously argued that the N300 ERP component serves as an index of the brain's use of representations of (real-world) statistical regularities.

Highly memorable images are more readily perceived.

Image memorability, the likelihood that a person will remember a particular image, has been shown to be an intrinsic property of the image that is distinct from many other visual and cognitive features. Research thus far has not identified particular visual features that can sufficiently explain this intrinsic memorability, but one possibility is that more and less memorable images differ in their statistical regularity (i.e.

Bypassing input to V1 in visual awareness: A TMS-EROS investigation.

Early visual cortex (V1-V3) is believed to be critical for normal visual awareness by providing the necessary feedforward input. However, it remains unclear whether visual awareness can occur without further involvement of early visual cortex, such as re-entrant feedback. It has been challenging to determine the importance of feedback activity to these areas because of the difficulties in dissociating this activity from the initial feedforward activity.

Is attention necessary for the representational advantage of good exemplars over bad exemplars?

Real-world (rw-) statistical regularities, or expectations about the visual world learned over a lifetime, have been found to be associated with scene perception efficiency. For example, good (i.e.

Effects of task type on spontaneous alternations of attentional states.

Mind wandering is a common occurrence that can have serious consequences, but estimating when mind wandering occurs is a challenging research question. Previous research has shown that during meditation, people may spontaneously alternate between task-oriented and mind-wandering states without awareness (Zukosky & Wang, 2021, Cognition, 212, Article 104689). However, under what conditions such alternations occur is not clear.

The Influence of Prestimulus 1/f-Like versus Alpha-Band Activity on Subjective Awareness of Auditory and Visual Stimuli.

Alpha rhythmic activity is often suggested to exert an inhibitory influence on information processing. However, relatively little is known about how reported alpha-related effects are influenced by a potential confounding element of the neural signal, power-law scaling. In the current study, we systematically examine the effect of accounting for 1/f activity on the relation between prestimulus alpha power and human behavior during both auditory and visual detection ( = 27; 19 female, 6 male, 2 nonbinary).

Familiarity influences visual detection in a task that does not require explicit recognition.

The current study aims to explore one factor that likely contributes to these statistical regularities, familiarity. Are highly familiar stimuli perceived more readily? Previous work showing effects of familiarity on perception have used recognition tasks, which arguably tap into post-perceptual processes. Here we use a perceptual task that does not depend on explicit recognition; participants were asked to discriminate whether a rapidly presented image was intact or scrambled.

Dynamics of alpha suppression index both modality specific and general attention processes.

EEG alpha power varies under many circumstances requiring visual attention. However, mounting evidence indicates that alpha may not only serve visual processing, but also the processing of stimuli presented in other sensory modalities, including hearing. We previously showed that alpha dynamics during an auditory task vary as a function of competition from the visual modality (Clements et al.

Typical viewpoints of objects are better detected than atypical ones.

Previous work has claimed that canonical viewpoints of objects are more readily perceived than noncanonical viewpoints. However, all of these studies required participants to identify the object, a late perceptual process at best and arguably a cognitive process (Pylyshyn, 1999). Here, we extend this work to early vision by removing the explicit need to identify the objects.

Effects of rhythmic auditory stimulation on vision: Oscillations in performance can be enhanced, but not induced.

A variety of reports suggest that rhythmic auditory stimulation can entrain visual perception, inducing perceptual oscillations as a function of time relative to the auditory rhythm. These effects have, to date, been reported only for stimulation frequencies at and below 3 Hz. Here we investigate the effects of rhythmic auditory stimulation on the detection of masked visual targets when this stimulation occurs at frequencies to which the visual system has been shown to entrain (8-12 Hz).

Dynamics of alpha suppression and enhancement may be related to resource competition in cross-modal cortical regions.

In the face of multiple sensory streams, there may be competition for processing resources in multimodal cortical areas devoted to establishing representations. In such cases, alpha oscillations may serve to maintain the relevant representations and protect them from interference, whereas theta band activity may facilitate their updating when needed. It can be hypothesized that these oscillations would differ in response to an auditory stimulus when the eyes are open or closed, as intermodal resource competition may be more prominent in the former than in the latter case.

The N300: An Index for Predictive Coding of Complex Visual Objects and Scenes.

Predictive coding models can simulate known perceptual or neuronal phenomena, but there have been fewer attempts to identify a reliable neural signature of predictive coding for complex stimuli. In a pair of studies, we test whether the N300 component of the event-related potential, occurring 250-350-ms poststimulus-onset, has the response properties expected for such a signature of perceptual hypothesis testing at the level of whole objects and scenes. We show that N300 amplitudes are smaller to representative ("good exemplars") compared with less representative ("bad exemplars") items from natural scene categories.

Separation of item and context in item-method directed forgetting.

Contextual information plays a critical role in directed forgetting (DF) of lists of items, whereas DF of individual items has been primarily associated with item-level processing. This study was designed to investigate whether context processing also contributes to the forgetting of individual items. Participants first viewed a series of words, with task-irrelevant scene images (used as "context tags") interspersed between them.

Probing the mechanisms of probe-mediated binocular rivalry.

Binocular rivalry occurs when incompatible images are presented simultaneously but separately to each eye. Perceptual dominance reverses over time such that one image temporarily dominates perception, while the other image is suppressed. Prior research has shown that briefly-presented probes modulate perception such that probes presented to the suppressed eye tend to produce shorter percept durations relative to when probes are presented to the dominant eye.

Collaborative Learning Teams to Longitudinally Teach and Assess Teamwork Behaviors and Attitudes.

To create and assess the effectiveness of a model of continuous development of teamwork skills (CDTS), which used a longitudinal peer feedback process across multiple courses that incorporated collaborative team learning. Pharmacy students participated in collaborative learning teams across the first three years of the doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) curriculum, with team membership changing annually. Self, peer, and team evaluations were completed using the Comprehensive Assessment of Team Member Effectiveness (CATME) Smarter Teamwork system at four time points each year (three formative assessments and one summative assessment).

Impact of Team Formation Method on Student Team Performance Across Multiple Courses Incorporating Team-based Learning.

To assess the impact of forming student learning teams based on problem solving styles on team performance and student perceptions of team quality. This was a prospective observational study involving students in the first year of a Doctor of Pharmacy degree program. Collaborative learning teams (balanced, implementer, optimizer, and random assignment) were created based on students' results on the Basadur Creative Problem Solving Profile Inventory.

Examining the role of feedback in TMS-induced visual suppression: A cautionary tale.

Visual suppression by single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation (sTMS) has been attributed to interruptions of either feedforward or feedback activity in the visual stream. The relative timing of the C1 event related potential (ERP) and of the TMS suppression, taken from separate studies, supports an interruption of feedback. Here we probe the validity of such cross-study comparisons, both by conducting a literature survey and by measuring each time window within participants for the same stimuli.

An Initial Validation Study of the Self-Rating Scale of Self-Directed Learning for Pharmacy Education.

The purpose of this study was to explore and validate the factor structure of the original SRSSDL scale with pharmacy students enrolled in a four-year Doctor of Pharmacy program at a southeastern university, and to assess the differences in the self-directed learning behaviors across different class years of students. Factor analysis was used to identify the factor structure of a self-rating scale of self-directed learning (SRSSDL) among pharmacy students (n=872) and to examine students' self-directed learning (SDL) behaviors by year in the pharmacy education curriculum. Five factors - intrinsic motivation, awareness, collaboration, reflection and application - showed acceptable levels of reliability.

Distinct contributions of functional and deep neural network features to representational similarity of scenes in human brain and behavior.

Inherent correlations between visual and semantic features in real-world scenes make it difficult to determine how different scene properties contribute to neural representations. Here, we assessed the contributions of multiple properties to scene representation by partitioning the variance explained in human behavioral and brain measurements by three feature models whose inter-correlations were minimized through stimulus preselection. Behavioral assessments of scene similarity reflected unique contributions from a functional feature model indicating potential actions in scenes as well as high-level visual features from a deep neural network (DNN).

Perceptions of pharmacy faculty need for development in educational research.

Introduction: Pharmacy educators have identified that pharmacy faculty need a better understanding of educational research to facilitate improvement of teaching, curricula, and related outcomes. However, the specific faculty development needs have not been assessed. The purpose of this study was to investigate self-reported confidence among clinical doctor of pharmacy faculty in skills essential for conducting educational research.

Evidence for similar patterns of neural activity elicited by picture- and word-based representations of natural scenes.

A long-standing core question in cognitive science is whether different modalities and representation types (pictures, words, sounds, etc.) access a common store of semantic information. Although different input types have been shown to activate a shared network of brain regions, this does not necessitate that there is a common representation, as the neurons in these regions could still differentially process the different modalities.

Regulating the Access to Awareness: Brain Activity Related to Probe-related and Spontaneous Reversals in Binocular Rivalry.

Research on the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) has implicated an assortment of brain regions, ERP components, and network properties associated with visual awareness. Recently, the P3b ERP component has emerged as a leading NCC candidate. However, typical P3b paradigms depend on the detection of some stimulus change, making it difficult to separate brain processes elicited by the stimulus itself from those associated with updates or changes in visual awareness.

Categorization influences detection: A perceptual advantage for representative exemplars of natural scene categories.

Traditional models of recognition and categorization proceed from registering low-level features, perceptually organizing that input, and linking it with stored representations. Recent evidence, however, suggests that this serial model may not be accurate, with object and category knowledge affecting rather than following early visual processing. Here, we show that the degree to which an image exemplifies its category influences how easily it is detected.